


Save One From the Pitiless Wave

by nympheline



Category: La Belle au bois dormant | Sleeping Beauty - Charles Perrault, Sleeping Beauty (Fairy Tale)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-02
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 04:56:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1115774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nympheline/pseuds/nympheline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The princess could not sleep. She had not slept for almost sixteen years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Save One From the Pitiless Wave

Her mother, when she couldn’t sleep, would walk. Over the rough steps, over and over the rough stone steps, so that she knew which were unexpected squat and which were planned and planed too tall; over and over and over the rough stone castle steps, until she could walk them in her sleeplessness, with her eyes closed, and never stumble or stagger or fall.

Her other mother, when she couldn’t sleep, would climb the tallest tower in her heavy woolen nightdress. She found herself wakeful less often than her restive wife, and made the journey but once a month or so, so she knew the walk less well. The king would teeter as she set her foot an inch above the four steps that ended sooner than her body’s rhythm thought they would; would bark her royal shins against the steps cut purposefully, randomly high to foil invaders; would yelp and curse and leave smudges of royal blood all over the tower steps.

(The cleaning ladies supplemented their salaries by scraping the umber flakes off the stone into little glass vials, which they sold in the markets as charms against ill luck. The queen knew because she watched Smither and Highberg doing it one night in the candlelight. The king knew because the queen knew, and the king threw back her great ruddy head and laughed and laughed, and left her handkerchiefs lying about conspicuously whenever she pricked her fingers embroidering, or fell to the nosebleeds that plagued her every fall and spring.)

But once the king made her way past the offensive steps, she would settle herself behind the great telescope, snuggle under her fur blankets, and spend an hour or two scanning the skies for a sight of planets whose continents she would never rule, whose lands would never know her name, whose seas her fleet would never have to sail. Then she’d lie down on a pallet and stare at the slow arc of the stars until her eyes closed and she slept. It was very restful—for the king, at least; the king’s person, perched atop the highest tower of the castle in full (if distant) sight of the whole country, gave her guards conniptions.

The princess could not sleep. She sat in the underbelly of the castle, which, in her grandmother’s time, had been as dank and dark and dungeon-like as the most gothic mind could wish. But then her mother had come to marry the king, and had brought with her, along with her considerable dowry, a fervent belief that damp worked horrors untold on the castle staff. Within two months of the wedding, warm lamps burned the darkness away, tapestries softened the chill, and the dowager queen could be heard muttering that in _her_ day, every proper castle had a proper dungeon to strike fear into the hearts of the lawless. The young queen replied blandly that fear was all very well, but that striking pneumonia into their lungs was an unforgivable barbarism, and there weren’t enough prisoners to warrant a dungeon anyway, and wasn’t it nice to have all that extra space for the armoury? And the dowager queen sniffed and retreated down the well-lit, padded steps to flirt with the armsmaster.

But it was night now, and the armsmaster slept in his narrow, lonely bed; her grandmother slept in her wide, lonely bed; and her mothers slept wrapped in each other’s arms.

The princess could not sleep. She had not slept for almost sixteen years.

The witch woman sat behind the princess, the strong woman arms layered alongside the weak, wizened limbs of the girl. They waited. The princess jogged her foot idly on the treadle, enjoying the pumping resistance and the wooden hum of the spinning wheel. She held one finger to the whirling hoop and watched it rub her skin raw. “Are you certain this is going to work?”

The witch woman—who was barely a woman, being only a year past her majority, and even more narrowly a witch—slapped the princess’s hand away. “Don’t. You’ll bleed all over the wheel, and I don’t fancy our chances if we throw new factors into the spell.”

The princess put her finger in her mouth. “So you’re not certain.”

The witch woman brushed the princess’s dead straw hair aside and kissed the back of her neck. “I am certain of only one thing in this world.”

The princess arched her spine, jutting the round rear of her against the witch woman’s wool-covered cunt.

"Don’t," the witch woman said again. She did not offer a reason.

"It would pass the time," said the princess.

"Don’t."

They waited.

The witch woman felt her eyelids droop downward, and the two or three orphan tears that heralded sleep pricked in the corners of her eyes.

The princess shut her eyes experimentally, wishing her thoughts to slow and still and her mind to go as dark as her vision. She opened her eyes, breathed deep in time with the drowsing body behind her, tried again.

The clock struck midnight.

The witch woman jolted awake. The wide red eyes of the princess looked into hers, desperate and happy and frightened.

The witch woman kissed her. She took the princess’s face in her hands, inhaled the stale tea scent of her breath, and kissed her.

"Happy Birthday," the witch woman said, and the princess sighed into her mouth.

"Are you ready?" the witch woman said. The princess turned back to the spinning wheel. The witch woman closed her eyes, setting free the selfish tears to run in burning rills over her young, lined face; and the princess nodded.

The witch woman closed her hands lightly over the princess’s. Together they looped the cord over the bobbin, fed it through the rod, and loosened the thumbscrew.

"Begin," said the witch woman, as the last echoes of the last stroke faded. The princess pressed her foot down on the treadle as hard and as fast as she could. The great wooden wheel jolted forward, clacking and juddering as it drew the soft bat of wool from their hand to the bobbin.

"When I count three," said the princess. "One… two…"

The witch woman clamped her fingers shut over the princess’s, and the crazy, whirling wheel dragged their hands to the spindle with a jerk. The wooden point slipped into the side of the princess’s finger and scraped against the tiny bones therein before the witch woman saw the blood that told her she could pull their hands away.

The witch woman leaned back in her chair. The princess slid forward and stared up at the wide open eyes brimming above her. She was still bleeding sluggishly from one finger as she clutched at the witch woman’s dress, and her eyes were rolling panicked under the inexorable lowering of her lids.

"No," said the princess. "No, no, not just me, it’s not supposed to be just me—" And then she was asleep. She breathed slow and deep, and her hands uncurled, and her legs twitched as dogs’ do.

"It was always supposed to be just you," the witch woman said into the silence. "After all, someone has to to wake you up."

She carried the sleeping girl up the irregular stone steps of the tallest tower in the castle, and she did not stumble. She lay her down on a pallet under the stars and leaned over the parapet to watch as the briars and brambles grew up over the castle walls; and it was not until dawn broke over the roses that the witch woman stepped away. She lay down behind the princess, curling her strong woman arms around the soft, languid limbs of the girl, breathing the same even breaths.

"Sweet dreams," she murmured, and kissed the princess’s shoulder. And then she settled her head down to wait for the end of a hundred years.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published [here](http://nympheline.tumblr.com/post/32856342335/she-couldnt-sleep). Written from tumblr user [writeworld](http://writeworld.tumblr.com/)'s [prompt from 3 October 2013](http://writeworld.tumblr.com/post/32840089867/she-couldnt-sleep): "She couldn't sleep." Title taken from Edgar Allan Poe's "A Dream Within a Dream."


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